Food Fight / U.S. accuses Vietnam of dumping catfish on the American market

David Armstrong, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Saturday, February 8, 2003

Minh Lam holds a box of Vietnamese Catfish at the Seafood Center on Clement st. The Fish are imported already filled. Photo By Kurt Rogers

Minh Lam holds a box of Vietnamese Catfish at the Seafood Center on Clement st. The Fish are imported already filled. Photo By Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Minh Lam holds a box of Vietnamese Catfish at the Seafood Center on Clement st. The Fish are imported already filled. Photo By Kurt Rogers

Minh Lam holds a box of Vietnamese Catfish at the Seafood Center on Clement st. The Fish are imported already filled. Photo By Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Food Fight / U.S. accuses Vietnam of dumping catfish on the American market

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Barely a year after a landmark agreement that was supposed to normalize postwar trading relations between the United States and Vietnam, the two nations are in a cat fight over catfish.

The cause of the commotion is an imported catfish from Vietnam called basa that American catfish farmers charge is being dumped on the U.S. market below cost by exporters who are subsidized by Vietnam's communist government. In the past two years, due to such cheap imports, prices of catfish have fallen by half, according to Hugh Warren, executive vice president of the Catfish Farmers of America.

U.S. officials charge that this violates the 2001 agreement between Washington and Hanoi that promised a level playing field. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce slapped steep anti-dumping duties on basa from Vietnam, which could soon raise prices in Bay Area markets and restaurants, where the fish is increasingly popular.

Basa now retails for $8 or $9 a pound in supermarkets, but the new duties should send it over the $10 mark. For importers, who normally pay $1.50 to $2 a pound wholesale, duties will push up the price to $2.25 to $3 a pound, industry sources say.

The anti-dumping duties were imposed over opposition from Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John McCain, R-Ariz., among others. Feinstein, McCain and three other senators argued in a Dec. 20, 2002, letter to Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans that imposing anti-dumping duties "would be inconsistent with our obligations under the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement."

The agency will decide on June 16 whether to impose the duties for the long term, according to spokesman Curt Cultice. For now, he said, importers must place duties ranging from 38 to 64 percent in an escrow account when they bring in Vietnamese basa. If the duties prove temporary, the money will be refunded.

Basa, which are farmed in the waters of the Mekong River delta, were virtually unknown in the United States before the late 1990s, when H&N Food International of San Francisco began importing and wholesaling the fish, said the company's vice president, Christine Ngo.

"In 1997 or '98, my father was in Vietnam, and he saw this fish-farming operation, and saw the potential of marketing this product in the U.S.," said Ngo, referring to her father, Hua Ngo, who heads the company.

SELLING TO DISTRIBUTORS

The Ngos began importing small quantities of basa and a related fish called tra. They sold the fish to distributors and wholesalers and a handful of restaurants and markets, such as the Seafood Center on San Francisco's Clement Street, which is run by members of the Ngos' extended family. Since then, basa "has really taken off, now many other importers handle it too," Christine Ngo said.

Imports of Vietnamese basa -- nearly all of which enters this country through the ports of San Francisco and Los Angeles -- went from 575,000 pounds in 1998 to 20 million pounds in 2001, according to American catfish producers.

Bay Area foodies who have cooked basa generally speak well of it.

"It's a little more delicate than domestic catfish," said Charles Phan, the Vietnam-born chef at the Slanted Door, who described basa as a mild, white- fleshed fish with a pleasant flavor.

SWITCHING TO CATFISH

Phan has switched from basa to domestic catfish at his restaurant because he couldn't get whole basa at an affordable price and wants to use fish with bones that won't fall apart in clay pot cooking, he said.

"The weight just kills it," Phan said of the costs to fly fresh basa -- heads, tails, bones and all -- by air from Vietnam.

For gourmet chefs and epicureans who must have fish as fresh as possible, only flying it in for next-day dining will do. However, about 95 percent of imported basa is filleted and frozen, and brought to the United States by ship on 45-to-60-day journeys, which is slower but also cheaper than flying it over.

Filleted basa was retailing for $8.99 a pound earlier this week at the Whole Foods market in San Ramon, where Anthony Colombini laid out fleshy, slightly pink strips of basa on a bed of crushed ice.

"We sell a lot of this, it's real popular," Colombini said. "It's a nice, clean fish, and there are no bones in it. I cook it at home. It's a bit like petrale sole."

However, the price of basa in markets and restaurants is sure to jump if the preliminary duties are made permanent, said Matt Fass, vice president of Marine Products International, a Virginia fish importer.

Additionally, Fass said, price rises for importers, wholesalers and distributors could cut into demand for basa, eventually disrupting supplies of the succulent, bewhiskered fish.

Additionally, Stevens said the basa duties could set a worrisome precedent for other imported seafood. Domestic shrimp producers, he said, are pressing Washington to impose duties on imported shrimp, most of which comes from Asia, especially China. Importers oppose such a move.

CUTTING INTO THE MARKET

Basa's sharp rise in popularity alarmed members of the Catfish Farmers of America, who estimated last year that basa has taken 12 percent of the United States' $590 million market for catfish.

The Catfish Farmers of America, based in Indianola, Miss., petitioned the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission to impose anti- dumping duties.

"We're pleased we've come as far as we have," said the association's Hugh Warren. "With our regulations and the government requirements that we're subjected to, we can't match the price" of imports.

Basa is growing in popularity in many Bay Area restaurants, but some chefs are not sold on the fish. Robert Lam, the Vietnam-born chef at Butterfly in San Francisco, said he doesn't cook with basa because fish farming is not closely regulated in Vietnam for environmental quality. He also prefers seasonal, local ingredients.

But basa's supporters -- among them Fass, who said he has inspected Vietnamese fish farms -- say basa are raised in fast-flowing waters in cages at the surface of the Mekong River and not at the murky bottom, like pond- raised American catfish.

HEALING THE WOUNDS

The 2001 U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement was intended to lower protectionist barriers in both countries and help heal the wounds of what Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call "the American War." After the war ended in 1975, Washington imposed a trade embargo on Hanoi that lasted until 1994, when the embargo was relaxed slightly.

"The evidence we have seen indicates clearly that the success of Vietnamese catfish exporters in the U.S. market is due not to dumping or government subsidies," Feinstein and McCain wrote in their letter to Commerce Secretary Evans, "but to the quality of the Vietnamese product and the relatively low cost of production in Vietnam."